Facebook could now be worth as much as $33.7bn according to valuations based on secondary market transactions. Such a figure sees it surpass Yahoo! and Ebay shows how far a few friends have come. Read More »

Drowning not waving

Google Wave we hardly knew you, much less used you or worked out what we were supposed to do with you. No Surprise then that Google announced last night that it was ending development of Google Wave due to, ahem, lack of “adoption”. Read More »

The Google social networking story has moved on with the Wall Street Journal reporting that discussions are being held with games developers to make their games available on the service. Read More »

Techcrunch reported over the weekend that Google has ‘quietly’ invested between $100-$200m in social gaming business Zynga, noting that Zynga’s product portfolio would give Google a solid base of games on which to launch Google Games later this year, as well as the potential to build the coveted social graph, and an excellent platform from which to provide a boost for Google Checkout. Read More »

Nearly half of web users in the US (47%) check Facebook everyday, rivalling the number of web users who watch television daily (55%), while Twitter, with its explosive growth over the past two years, still remains a niche activity for the online population, with just 6% logging in daily.

Research from Nielsen Online, which estimates the number of social media users in the US at 127m, shows Facebook’s reach trumps those of other traditional media channels, including radio (37% listen daily) and newspapers (22%). Read More »

Zynga, creator of social networking game FarmVille, PetVille and Mafia Wars, has come under fire after a 12-year-old in the UK racked up £905 mostly on his mother’s credit card paying for in-game credits on Facebook.

FarmVille, which allows Facebook (where it has more than 23 million fans) and MySpace users to create a virtual farm, where they can plant, grow and harvest crops and livestock, gives new users virtual coins to start, with an option to get ahead in the games by buying extra credits with real cash, a strategy which Zynga has been criticised for in the past. Read More »

Life on Zygna's billion dollar farm

This could spell potential disaster for some third party Twitter app developers if reports that Twitter is working on a number of apps of its own prove correct.

According to a report on Business Insider Twitter could buy or build its own photo-uploader and mobile app.

It quotes a source that said URL shortener Bit.ly, photo uploader TwitPic and iPhone app Tweetie are now considered core to the Twitter platform. The source said these apps will either be bought or competed with. Read More »

Talk about bad news for Yahoo. Silicon Valley Insider claims that traffic and revenue growth at Yahoo! is “flat” and the internet-giant turned media-company needs to resolve “a fundamental innovator’s dilemma” before it can move ahead.

Silicon Alley Insider is reporting that flat traffic, flat revenues, and increasingly limited growth opportunities at Yahoo! could present a problem, especially if the company is unable fund innovation to help it steer through the constantly changing digital landscape.

Display advertising on Yahoo.com and its other media websites remains the company’s bread and butter revenue source, but that may not always be the case. The Silicon Valley source sees the internet “on a verge of tectonic shift” and that “the [web] page as a dominant paradigm is going away”. Read More »